"Oh, why has the health of my poor people not been restored," the prophet laments. Finally, Jeremiah wrings a cry from the very depths of his own life: "If only my head were waters, my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the dead of my poor people!" (Jer. 8:23 in Hebrew, 9:1 in English). The ability to utter that phrase with genuine conviction is the way that one gains the right to speak a prophetic word to his people. Until I can fully identify with their pain and suffering, until I can raise with them the questions of why things have not turned out as we all have hoped, until I can respond to their anguish with my own genuine tears of compassion, I can simply never be a prophet to them. I simply can never speak a hard word of God's truth until I have earned the right to do so as Jeremiah earned that right.
The gospel of God always contains two facets: gift and demand. Until I have received the gift of God's unbreakable love, until I have listened closely to the cries of pain of my people, until I have expressed openly and honestly my own fears and pains and frustrations about life's deepest mysteries, I have no right to speak the gospel's hard demands for justice and righteousness. Those who pastor people week in and week out must be prophets. But they cannot be prophets until they have earned that right; Jeremiah makes that crystal clear. Listen to him!
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